Transgender

Forum













%expand(%include(D:\http/ads/ads0.html))


Rio Winds Down After Carnival.

By Reuters
Contributed by Rachelle Austin

Rio De Janeiro
February 25, 1998

Life began returning to normal in Rio Tuesday after the delirium of two nights of Carnival parades, but in some corners of the city resilient drummers were still hammering the thumping beat of samba.

Hundreds of glamorous transvestites, gliding by in brilliant white bridal gowns or wiggling in bikinis, gathered near the beachfront in Ipanema for the huge gay street party which every year sees Carnival out.

``Stop Carnival? Just when we were starting to have fun?'' lamented a burly and bearded air hostess squeezed into a tight dress and wheeling a matching travel bag.

Rio's Carnival, which began amid fears of floods and blackouts, has been a roaring success. Foreign tourists shrugged off fears of crime and flooded into the city packing hotels which in previous years were half-empty.

Many paid hundreds of dollars to don sequins and feathers and parade with the famous samba schools to the cheers of 70,000 spectators in the Sambadrome stadium.

``I didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be singing,'' said Keith Mottram from England. ``But the people around me just took me by the hand, spun me when I needed to spin and it was brilliant fun.''

Jan Fairley, a Scottish musicologist, said some people from her samba school passed out in the heat during a pre-parade crush in the streets outside the stadium.

``But once we were inside it was fantastic. You can really cast off your inhibitions because no one's looking at you on your own, you're part of the whole thing,'' Fairley said, resting her sore feet on a chair.

From sunset Monday until just before dawn Tuesday, nearly 30,000 dancers and drummers from seven samba schools marched the length of the half-mile-long avenue of the Sambadrome.

In contrast to Sunday's parades, which some samba fans said lacked creativity, the mood in the stadium on the second and final night was electric.

A huge cheer went up as Chico Buarque, Brazil's revered singer and songwriter, cruised by on a float, surrounded by the octogenarian founders of Rio's most famous samba school Mangueira which this year paid hommage to Buarque.

But it was reigning champions Viradouro who had the grandstands wobbling beneath leaping fans, flirting with controversy as they momentarily switched from samba into the immensely popular ``funk'' beat of Rio's shantytown dancehalls.

``Champions! Champions!'' the crowd roared. Amid the chaos, a Brazilian film crew worked frantically to record the blaze of color and sound as a backdrop for a new version of the 1959 classic movie Black Orpheus.

Carnival experts said little-known Grande Rio school also had a good chance with its tribute to a famous Brazilian communist Luiz Carlos Prestes. It raised eyebrows by swapping semi-clad women for muscular men on its opening float.

A panel of judges was due to announce the Carnival parade winners Wednesday.

In the rest of Brazil, the party raged on. In the northeastern city of Recife, vast crowds packed into the cobblestoned streets of the historic Olinda neighborhood to dance to energetic ``frevo'' brass bands.

And in Salvador, also in the northeast, hundreds of thousands of revelers leaped about behind trucks blasting out the music of pop bands from huge walls of speakers.

Newspapers said Afro-Brazilian groups protested what they consider the gradual eradication of local culture by the amplified ``axe'' music that is all the rage in Brazil.



Back to
TGF's
Home Page